Female Soccer Player Violently Knees Foe In Face

Salt Lake City, Utah (CBS VEGAS) — A Utah girls’ soccer player has apologized after violently kneeing an opponent in the face during a match.

According to multiple reports, video from a recent match between the two schools surfaced belatedly showing East High senior Petiola Manu kneeing Woods Cross High’s Makenzie Clark in the face during a dead ball in the match.

“I just see my baby out there,” Makenzie’s mother Susie Clark told ABC-4. “It makes me sick to my stomach. It was a dead ball. It was after the fact. It was after the play was over. It was a brutal, dirty shot.”

According to ABC-4, Clark tore a ligament in her ankle and had to be carried off the field following the play, leaving her helpless when Manu decided to unleash a vicious knee to the face of the Woods Cross player that didn’t even draw a yellow or red card.

East High’s principal Paul Sagers sat down with the soccer coach and Manu to discuss the brutal incident and watch the clip, which he saw for the first time on Sunday. Manu has since accepted responsibility for the incident and apologized, but that has done little to quell the furor over the unprovoked attack.

“A knee to an unprotected head is unacceptable,” Susie Clark told KSL.com, “that kind of unsportsmanship is unacceptable, and I don’t want a player to get away with this to set a precedent for it to be able to happen again, that they can get away with something.”